


Citizens of the World

by NevillesGran



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Additional Assorted Trolls and Ancestors, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, fanfic of a fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22769575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Fanfic forSplickedylit/SpoonerizedSwiftness's unpublished Saviors of the World AU, in which the trolls are teenage superheroes (and the ancestors are adult...some of them are superheroes.) Links to more explanation in notes.I added the human kids around the edges.
Kudos: 18





	1. Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Saviors of the World is an AU from [Splickedylit](https://splickedylit.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr in which all the troll characters were superhumans created by (mad scientist) Dr. Calmasis. After Calmasis's death, the ancestor generation - the ones not trying for world domination - collect all the main generation from where they'd been being raised in ignorance around the world (they already had the dancestors on the secret island base) and train them as superheroes. [Here](https://splickedylit.tumblr.com/post/89922747393/highbloods-i-just-realized-the-other-day-that) and [here](https://splickedylit.tumblr.com/post/89922683468/lowbloods-ahhhh-its-been-way-too-long-since-i) are brief breakdowns of powers + how they work as a team, which are the quickest ways to get a sense of the AU. [Here](https://splickedylit.tumblr.com/tagged/Saviors+of+the+World/chrono) is the whole tag, with detailed character descriptions at the top. [Here](https://splickedylit.tumblr.com/post/104976316383/jw-the-sotw-kids-were-just-regularish-teens) is details on their pre-superhero lives, relevant to this fic, and [here](https://splickedylit.tumblr.com/post/92696549693/oo-i-love-the-new-expressions-lets-be-honest-i) is a "canon" dark alternate timeline that just gives me feelings, and can give you a good sense of how the AU fits together (pale gamkar-heavy.)

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you have always known who Karkat Vantas is.

Of course you have. How could you not? He’s Subject 01 from the Norilsk Isolation Experiment and you’ve had his picture taped on your wall since you discovered developmental psychology when you were eight years old. He’s only about half a year older than you are. You used to wonder what it would be like to meet him in person, this boy raised by wolves and a computer instead if the world’s most passive-aggressive mother. Now you suppose the results of the study will have to be thrown out, given that an empathic polyglot is unlikely to provide results that reflect the human norm. You’re a little disappointed.

Still, it was a thrill to recognize him from that first blurred photograph that hit the net. You could really only see his eyes and a bit of his hair, but that was enough. You’d been sad to learn he had died, and somehow it didn’t seem strange at all to realize that the body must have been a false double. You knew that boy couldn’t be beaten by something as mundane as a particularly bad winter storm.

You proposed your theory immediately on the discussion boards, but nobody paid much attention. You were surprised: it wasn’t a well-publicized study, what with the obvious need for isolation and undeniable ethical questions, but it’s not as if snappish, five-and-a-half foot albinos are in common supply, even internationally. Yet now a new one seems to pop up every other month, supported by some yearbook photo or birth certificate. A few are obviously faked; those get debunked quickly and somewhat viciously by the fandom. Others, though…some are so believable that you start to doubt your own theories. Maybe he really _was_ raised by an aunt in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Or in the suburbs of St. Petersburg?

No, that’s ridiculous. You’ve been following the erratically published updates on Subject 01 for years, though they all seem to have vanished from online archives now. You do not doubt your own memory.

You have, however, begun to doubt the reliability of the internet, more even than common sense dictates. Between the disappearing articles, the flawless fakes, and the way some sort of EMP disrupts every camera within a mile of the superhero-prevented imp attacks, you are certain someone on the team must have some sort of technological powers, or at least prowess. They don’t mention it in interviews, but why would they admit to such an advantage? Many civilians would be terrified to know that (as you suspect) a small group of superhumans, affiliated with no one but themselves, may be monitoring the entire internet.

So you turn to libraries and newspaper archives rather than Google. You make day trips into NYC to thumb through the obituaries, and talk with the couple people you suspect might actually have known a superhero. Your mother is surprisingly willing to take you on elaborate vacations—Paris, England, British Columbia—to repeat the processes there. When her smiling interrogation tactics force an answer out of you, you say it’s for a school project.

There are a couple other people on the forums who you suspect are undertaking similar research missions, and you occasionally chat with them covertly. However, your notes stay in a journal under your bed. You don’t need to show off your results—not, at least, until you’ve figured out the previous identities of all twelve members of Karkat’s team. Such success seems unlikely at times, but you have the tenacity and intuition of a natural-born researcher. You make swift progress.


	2. Jake

Your name is Jake English, and you are adrift somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

This was not part of your plan today! You took the boat, yes, and you deliberately took it out of sight of the island, yes, even though your sister warned you not to…yes. In retrospect, she might even have said something about needing to repair the rotors again before it could handle anything rougher than the Hellmurder Island bay. You were not listening, because you were thinking eagerly of the adventure you were bound to have out on the open sea!

(The fact that such an adventure would be away from the perils of your island, from the giant, two-mouthed cats to the monstrous cave-spiders that put their prey to sleep before they eat it alive…crossed your mind. You’re pretty sure you’re out of even the seagoat’s territory by now.)

So your adventure is a little less dynamic than you had anticipated, a little less racing through the waves and a little more floating slowly on top of them. That changes nothing. You are a bold, seafaring hero! No becalming will stop you!

Metaphorically, at least. Physically, you are rather stuck. And the sun is starting to go down, at which point even the warm tropical sea will cool, and your shorts and t-shirt will cease being quite enough covering for comfort. But you have a fire blanket for warmth and an entire extra sandwich left from lunch, so you really aren’t worried. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, and Jade will find you by morning.

You are sitting on the back bench, idly wondering whether you should try to sleep once it gets dark – you won’t really have anything else to do – or if you should keep a lonely night’s watch. Naval protocol suggests the latter. You could stargaze…

There is a soft flash of white light and two struggling figures appear in midair a couple feet above your small deck. They hover for a moment, outlined in red and blue sparks and engaging in what appears to be a cheerful bout of fisticuffs, before one punches the other in the gut and they both fall at your feet with a thump.

You have spent your entire life on an island filled with a variety of superpowered megafauna. You may prefer to spend much of your time watching movies inside, but nonetheless you are on your feet with two pistols trained on the strange young men before they finished untangling their limbs.

“What the hell, Sol,” says the puncher, who had the misfortune to land on the bottom. He is tall, pale, and blond, with an arch, aristocratic accent and some sort of scars on his neck. He looks a little familiar. “Where did—“

They both look around and see you at about the same time. The gentleman’s eyes narrow and the Japanese boy’s, partially obscured by what look like 3-D sunglasses, widen.

You’re certain yours match and more, as you recognize the young men. _Superheroes._ On _your_ boat!

_GOLLY._

You tuck your guns into your belt and bend down to help them up as fast as you can. “By _Jove_ I am sorry to have frightened you, gentlemen! I mean, ha, not that I expect you could be frightened by me, of course, now when you’re out fighting imps every other day or so! Holy Toledo, are you formidable out there! I’ve seen every piece of footage I can get, and you’re just…wow!”

You should probably stop talking now. You are embarrassing yourself. You are definitely wigging out Mr. Captor and Mr. Ampora—Sollux and Eridan? Can you refer to them so informally, at least in your head?

Who are you kidding, you’ve been on a mental first-name basis with all the New Heroes for months. Gee willikers, you are so excited right now!

“Um. Thankth.” Oh _jiminy_ , Sollux has the same lisp in person as he does in interviews! Not that there’s any reason he wouldn’t. Unless it was another thing to obscure his secret identity—in which case he is admirably diligent about staying in-character, even when out of uniform!

Land sakes, you are talking to them _face to face_ , no masks or anything!

“Thorry to randomly land on your boat,” Sollux continues. He turns his head to scans the horizon. “I guess we would have been pretty wet otherwise.”

Eridan snorts, setting his glasses back onto his nose. They’d fallen off when the two hit the boat. “I can swim.”

Sollux elbows him. “Fuck off, ED. You can’t actually breathe water with those neckflapth sewn up.”

“Wow, that is genuinely rude as fuck, Sol,” Eridan drawls. “I’m still a nationally acclaimed swimmin’ champ. So go suck a computer cable—oh wait, you can’t, because your freaky brain just dropped us in the middle of the ocean.”

Sollux looks around, then back at you. “Yeah, where are we? There isn’t wifi for kilometers.”

You pull out your trusty compass. “Well, north is that way,”—you point left—“so my island is back there”—you jerk your thumb over your shoulder. “About twenty kilometers, I think?”

Sollux narrows his eyes. “Are you completely lost.”

Your shoulders sag. “Yes.”

He sighs. “Fine. I’ll triangulate us on by thatellite and take everyone home.”

“The kid can get home on his own,” Eridan interrupts. “We’re out of costume, remember? Better maintain minimal contact with the locals.” He slaps the wheel behind him. “He’s got a boat.”

“Yeah.” You bite your lip. Would it be presumptuous—but they’re superheroes, aren’t they, all about helping the innocent? Maybe they know how to fix a motor engine.

No, you’ll be fine. They have world-saving to get back to. You’d rather suffer a little of Jade’s scorn and exasperation than throw a wrench in the wheels of justice and global safety. “I’ll be positively spiffing!”

“If you thay tho.” Sollux stares up at the sky, tilting his head like he’s seeing something. “All right, we’re…theriously in the middle of nowhere, damn. But there’s a small island eighteen kilometers due that way. Ith that yours?”

He points more to the right than directly behind you, but still, not bad navigating!

“Indeed it is!” You take his hand and shake it energetically. “Thank you so much, Mr. Captor. It was a real pleasure to meet you!” You give Eridan’s hand the same eager treatment. “And Mr. Ampora! I can’t believe you’re really here. I’ve always wanted to meet heroes of your caliber!”

This is absolutely true. More specifically, it is your dearest ambition to _be_ a hero of their caiber. You wish you knew how they came to achieve it. You are only a couple years younger, and have plenty of experience fighting villainous creatures!

“Yeah, about that,” says Eridan. He glances furtively at Sollux. “We’re actually on a top secret superhero mission, right, so you can’t tell anyone you saw us. Definitely don’t post it online. We’d be totally busted.”

Gosh, a secret mission! You are so glad you didn’t try to waste time with your mechanical troubles.

“My word on it!” you promise. “Best of luck on your mission—and don’t worry about me!”

“Yeah, got it,” says Sollux. He grabs Eridan’s arm and they teleport off, leaving you grinning like a superhero-mad fool—which, of course, you are.

Holy mackerel _,_ that was _nifty!_

You’ve barely sat down again when there’s another flash of light, green this time. Jade appears in her usual skirt and combat boots, holding tight to Bec’s ruff.

“Jake! Is this where you’ve been all day? I thought you were just going to circle the island!”

She cocks her head, and you know what she’s just heard: the distinct lack of a running motor. Her eyes narrowly dangerously. “Did you completely burn out the motor?”

A hero owns up to his mistakes.

“Um. Possibly? It stopped working about three hours ago.”

Your older sister facepalms hard. “Of course it did, dumbass. The rotors are all out of alignment.”

“Oops?” Engineering is Jade’s thing. You are more of a cinema and adventurous heroics man.

Speaking of which…no, you gave your word. Jade is a smashing older sister, but she doesn’t have much interest in superheroic shenanigans, and might let the story slip to an online chum. You will have to make a substantial effort not to do that yourself, so it’s best to begin as you plan to go on.

“Jake, why are you grinning?” Jade asks suspiciously.

Curse her sharp wits!

“Nothing. I’m not. I mean, I’m just thinking…that your aptitude for mechanics is truly impressive! I bet you could build robots if you put your mind to it!”

“I have built robots,” she reminds you patiently.

“Yes, but bigger ones! Like Grandma and Grandpa used to make!”

Jade’s eyes droop a little, and you feel a slight roil of guilt—she remembers them better than you do. But she ruffles your hair with a smile. “You’re sort of an idiot sometimes, you know that?”

She skritches Bec’s head at the same time, in pretty much the same way. You stopped being bothered by that years ago. It’s just how Jade shows affection.

“Come on, it’s your turn to pen the fairy-cows.”

The fairy-cows—tinkerbulls!—are probably your favorite creatures on Hellmurder Island. They flutter around on wings that look much too weak to hold up a head that big, and they’ve never once tried to kill you. You lock them up at night for their own protection, and so you can milk them in the morning. They’re much easier to milk than the centaurs.

You make sure everything you brought is in your satchel—mostly just that last sandwich, really—and put a hand on Bec’s back. “Tally ho, then, Becquerel! Let’s go home!”

Bec wags his tail, and the three of you vanish in a blink.

(A moment later, after some sharp commands to “Fetch!” and some less authoritative bribery with your sandwich, the broken motorboat follows.)


	3. Dave

Your name is Dave Strider, and your friends talk you into doing the weirdest shit.

For instance, right now, instead of chilling at home, playing video games or maybe laying down some sick new beats, you’re taking an ironic road trip across the width of Texas in order to track down the supposed family of an imp-fighting, parapalegic superhero. Your Bro is driving, so you’ve been listening to his Muppets Big Movie soundtrack remix on a loop for the last two hours, thirty-six minutes, and seven seconds. The break was only so you could get out a fight with shitty swords for thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds in the blazing Texas sun—the Strider equivalent of pulling into a gas station to stretch your legs, you guess. Before that, you’d been listening to the Muppets Christmas Movie soundtrack remix, even though you were driving. You’re pretty sure your Bro only agreed to this ironic roadtrip because you said he could pick the music the whole time.

Little does he know, ironic bonding and vacationing aren’t the real purpose of this trip. It’s really a fact-finding mission for your longtime internet friend, who you’ve known so long she’s basically a long-distance sister. A weird, annoying, long-distance sister, who convinces you to do stuff like drive across Texas and deliberately run out of gas in the middle of nowhere in order to get picked up by a chick in a tractor so you can subtly interrogate her and her family about her allegedly dead brother. Which is probably a pretty tender subject, so you’re not really sure how to be casual about it. But whatever, you’ll deal.

Honestly, you wouldn’t have agreed to any of this if Jade hadn’t promised the girl with the tractor would definitely come by. It’s no joke to be caught at the crossroads of Jackshit and Nothing, Texas in the middle of August. It’s fucking hot out here. But Jade’s sort of psychic, so here you are, and there’s the needle hovering past Empty on the dashboard, and there’s the sputtering as the engine coughs, makes a few more desperate attempts at moving forward, then dies altogether.

Thanks to Newtonian physics, you keep going forward for about a quarter of a mile on the flat dirt road. It’s surprisingly quiet without the beatboxing Muppets. When it’s clear you’ve definitely stopped, your Bro glances at the arrow hovering over E, makes a vaguely ironic grunt, and gets out of the car to make sure the engine isn’t broken as well. It’s a pretty old car; Bro bought it cheap and fixed it up himself.

You grab another crappy sword out of the backseat before you get out of the car, just in case he decides to draw his Unbreakable Katana and get some Strife in before dealing with the whole lack-of-gas problem.

Before that inevitable battle commences though, there’s a rumbling from behind a low hill off to the right of the road and a tractor pulls into view at the crest. You allow yourself a slight smile—good ol’ Jade.

.

Three hours, five minutes, twenty-nine seconds later, Bro is driving into town with someone to pick up a can of gas. They’re been gone for two hours and thirty minutes exactly of those hours: even by the standards of the Southwestern United States, this is the boondocks. You are hiding in the bathroom with a small, walkie-talkie-like radio to your lips.

“Romeo, oh Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”

You switch from sending to receiving mode and it’s only a moment before Rose replies with a slight crackle. “You know that doesn’t actually mean– never mind. Mission report?”

“They know. I mean, you’re right, Nitram is from this farm—how the hell did you figure out the exact farm? And the family _knows_.”

There’s a lot of static, so Rose’s triumphant shout and fist pump don’t really come through. All right, she probably didn’t pump her fist, or even shout much. She’s more of a self-satisfied grin girl, which you appreciate because excited outbursts of emotion aren’t very cool. You get enough of those from John and Jade.

She’s said something again, though, and you couldn’t hear it through the static. These are pretty crappy radios, which you’re using because Rose is convinced that anything connected to wifi or mobile networks will be tracked and recorded. You aren’t sure if she’s right, but it’s a pretty cool, ironically low-tech thing to have anyway.

You take a step across the tiny bathroom, in case the slight change in distance helps. “What was that?”

“...ey kn.…eath was faked?” Rose repeats.

“Yeah.” And you really hope they can’t hear you outside this room, though you doubt it’s possible. There’s enough general hubbub, and you’ve got the volume down low. “I talked to the little kids, siblings and cousins. There’s a load of them. Little kids are always excited about superheroes, and they love to brag about cool older siblings. And they’re terrible at keeping secrets.”

“Hmm,” says Rose, the sound she makes when she’s about to get all psychological on you. But she must be resisting the Freudian lure because instead she asks, “Do you think they helped fake it?”

“Not a clue,” you reply. “Does it matter?”

Someone knocks on the door, insistently. “Almost done in there?” Damn, there are too many people in this house, and their accents are all even thicker than yours.

“One minute!” you holler back. You bring the radio back up to your mouth, hit send. “Gotta go,” you whisper. “Delta out.”


	4. Jane

Your name is Jane Crocker and you have the coolest after-school job in the world! Well, no, you could be, say, an apprentice private investigator. But you work in a bakery and that is a _near second._ Admittedly, you aren’t exactly kneading dough and icing cakes in the kitchen—you are, in fact, standing behind a cash register in the front shop. But everyone’s got to start somewhere, right? It’s all about getting your foot in the door.

And today you have not just your foot, or even your whole body, but a delicious, homemade cherry-cream pie through the door. You spent hours on this pie—rolling out the crust, picking out the best cherries, whipping the cream just so before setting it in the oven, so it would mix with the fruit into a sweet, smooth filling as it baked. Your masterpiece is sitting in an artistic light blue box is the shared staff refrigerator right now, completing its journey from scratch ingredients to the chilled culinary delight that will win you a place in the hallowed kitchen of Betty’s Bakery.

Yes, ho ho, a girl named Crocker working at a bakery called “Betty’s”; it’s very amusing and you’ve never heard the joke before, ever.

(You could go by Egbert, but Crocker was Mom’s last name and you’re sticking with it, even if you don’t remember her. It’s how your parents decided to divvy up the surnames before you and your brother were born, and you know it makes Dad happy in a good-sad way that you keep it.)

 _Ding_ goes the giant novelty oven timer on the wall that serves as a clock, and you resist the urge to shout because yes! Break time! You finish helping this one customer—a local, semi-regular, buying a chocolate cake for her niece’s birthday party—and let your fellow after-school cashier-minder take the next. He can handle the counter for the next ten minutes, while you take your perfectly chilled pie of the fridge and present it to the Head Baker.

The door to the kitchen is shut, as usual, to prevent anyone from catching a glimpse of Betty’s secret recipes being brought to delicious life. Plus, the Chief Dessertician sometimes sings while he works, and it’s sort of loud.

It swings open easily and you stand in the doorway in shock. Neither the Head Baker nor the Chief Dessertician are in sight, which is strange enough—you’ve never known them to be gone at the same time. You’re pretty sure that were actual fire to rain down from the sky, at least one of them would be in the kitchen making pudding flambé.

But was really catches you attention is the box on the counter, the beautiful light blue box that your dad gave you for just this occasion. It’s wide open, the top torn half-off as if by some brutish animal. It’s surrounded by crumbs, on the counter and even on the floor, and a smooth pink smear on the counter that you can tell without licking would taste like the perfect blend of fresh cherries and home-whipped cream.

You don’t want to step closer but you do. Behind you, the door swings shut with a sound like an axe hitting the execution block. You don’t want to look closer, but you do that too. Even the previous carnage hadn’t prepared for you what meets your eyes in the broken robin’s eggshell of the box: your pie, your magnum opus…

It’s not just that there is a large slice cut out. You could deal with that (the box said “PROPERTY OF JANE CROCKER, PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH” in very large, clear writing but you do understand the draw of delectable baked goods, even if you do not forgive those too weak to resist it in this particular case.) But there is not _just_ a large slice missing.

The ENTIRE CENTER OF THE PIE IS SMASHED IN, as if somebody had SHOVED THEIR HAND IN THE MIDDLE _._

You want to wail so badly that you have to cover your mouth with both hands. You spent _two hours_ getting this pie to be perfect. You have been delicately nursing its chilling process since it came out of the oven last night. You have been planning it for _three weeks._ You were going to present it to the chefs, prove your worth, and get to work in the _kitchen._

You take a couple deep breaths, because you have never been a screaming maniac and you do not intend to start today.

The question flickers through your mind that could this possibly be one of John’s pranks? It _is_ April 7th, exactly halfway though the two weeks between April Fools Day and your shared birthday; you two traditionally spend this time playing your best pranks on each other, no holds barred and no parental punishment. It’s a peace-keeping measure your dad devised, a theoretical exchange for the other 50 weeks of the year being prank-free. Also in theory, Dad awards a trophy to whoever pulls the _best_ best prank. Really he bakes you each a cake and tells you how proud he is of you both. Whatever. You’re fairly confident that the winner is always you.

You dismiss the notion without a second thought. John may be juvenile at times, but he isn’t _mean_. He knows how important this opportunity was to you. He helped you chop the cherries! He’s an alright brother.

Your next idea is that it was hoodlums, or worse, rogues. Betty’s Bakery is in…not the nicest part of town, you have to admit. To be entirely honest, there have been rumors, in the past, that the woman who bought it from the original owners has some sort of mob connections. You’re certain those tales are completely unfounded—you’ve only met her once, and all she said was, “Shello, guppy! Nice to have ya!’” But she seemed perfectly respectable.

Anyway, your dad would not have let you work here if there was any truth to the rumors. He’s very strict about things like that.

A third hypothesis flits across your mind, and this one you catch and examine like a butterfly on a keen investigatorial pin. What if this wasn’t sabotage, or even very clumsy pie-eating technique, but an accident? The crumbs are spread widely on the floor, as if there was some sort of ruckus. If you stood right _here_ , and had much larger feet than you do in reality, you might create the sort of relatively crumb-free space you see below your feet right now. And if you were accosted from behind, by somebody standing…there! Or perhaps over there? Either way, you put your hand down on the counter in surprise, leaning to keep steady, and unfortunately landed it smack-dab in the center of this delicious pie you were about to eat!

For which the unknown, large-footed miscreant will pay, you remind yourself, because they were eating your pie _before_ they were accosted. Even if they have already suffered the karma due all masterpiece-consuming thieves, you the baker have not yet received your recompense.

You are so glad it was threatening to rain earlier today, because it means you have your trusty PI hat in your backpack, just inside the kitchen door. In event of precipitation, the fetching fedora keeps the rain off your glasses; in event of a mystery such as this, it sets the mood just right.

The first step is to discover the fate of that missing slice of pie. Did the culprit—Culprit A, you suppose, the pie-eater—finish it before Culprit B began to strife? That’s entirely possible. But if not, they would have been holding it with their other hand, the one they didn’t use to crush your (perfect, beautiful) pie. You assume they would have thrown it, or at least waved it emphatically in their attacker’s face. In which case…

Aha! There, by the oven: a sliver of sweet, creamy pie. You kneel down to poke it, then lick your finger—it’s _so good_ , you cannot BELIEVE this pie got ruined. It’s the best you’ve ever made.

You will have justice.

The crumb layer is densest near the counter, but your keen detective eyes spot a trail leading toward the back of the kitchen. You follow, and there seems to be another mess near the twin doors that lead out of the room. You cannot tell whether the Culprits absconded outside or—please please please not—into the office room where the owner does paperwork sometimes.

You are about to press one ear carefully to the office door when you spot a smear on the opposite doorframe—exactly the sort of soft pink left by someone who’s hand is covered in chilled cherry-and-cream pie. So you press your ear to that door instead.

It’s quiet. Too quiet. Your eyes narrow as your detective senses tingle like a funny bone hitting the corner of a desk. But there’s nothing funny about an ambush.

You dash back into the kitchen proper and grab a large wooden spoon, suitable for whacking pie-ruining ruffians over the head. You also check your watch—seven minutes to go before you’re expected back at the cash register. You’ve solved cases on tighter schedules, but not many.

You yank the back door open and lunge forth with your spoon, ready to prod some serious buttock.

There’s nobody there.

It is, however, drizzling slightly, so you’re doubly glad of your fedora. And on the ground, a couple feet away, you spot a telltale drop of pink, not yet washed away by the pittering rain. It must have been dropped recently, because your pie filling is not particularly water-resistant.

Peering closer at the ground, you spot another speck of once-pristine crust, and then another! The trail of crumbs leads down the alley as surely as a forest path to a candy cottage. But you aren’t here to save some kids from an oven—you want answers, and a heartfelt apology. And maybe a little bit of vengeance because darn it, you worked really hard on that pie, and no, you’re not going to get over it anytime soon!

You follow the crumbs.

“—not to come here!”

You hear the voice before you see the speaker. She isn’t far from the back door, just around the corner really, and you gulp: it is your boss, Ms. Condesce! Surely she can’t have anything to do with this most heinous of crimes. But the trail leads right to her, or where she seems to be standing.

“If your highness could be bothered to pick up a cell phone, I wouldn’t have to!” snaps a male with a deep voice and a thick Irish accent. “Are you hearing me, Meenah? The brats are getting good, fast. We need to fucking move shit forward.”

You do not sniff at his crude language, truly you do not. But you must have made some noise because the man is suddenly standing in front of you, nearly seven feet tall and snarling. You brandish your wooden spoon in self-defense, and he breaks it in half with one huge hand.

“Looks like we got ourselves a motherfuckin’ _spy,_ ” he growls.

Shivers run up your spine that have nothing to do with the cold, wet wall against which you are pinned. You are too scared to speak.

Ms. Condesce comes around to stare at you as well, her lips pursed in an expression which suggests you will _not_ be getting promoted to the kitchen today, even if you were to miraculously reconstruct your beautiful cherry-cream pie right here in this alley. Not that you are thinking about that right now—you are genuinely too busy being scared stiff, much more frightened than a tiny voice in the back your head insists is logical in these actually quite innocuous circumstances. Yes, they were arguing, but you didn’t hear the subject—some shenanigan they’re planning, you suppose. But your PIE is missing its CENTER, and you were keen on the culprit’s trail!

…And this terrifyingly tall, muscular man with the bright orange hair and too-dark eyes has _pink cream on the corner of his mouth._

“Nah, that’s just one of the gills from my bakery,” Ms. Condesce is saying. “Dunno what she’s doin’ out here, though. Oughtta be workin’.”

You are still all but shaking in fear, but you draw yourself up and do your best to meet her eyes. “I’m on my break, Ms. Condesce. I- I was investigating the loss of the dessert I brought to work today, which I’d hoped might earn me a chance to work in the kitchen. Based on the clues I’ve gathered, I’m afraid I must accuse your…friend of deliberate pastry sabotage, or at least theft.” Your teeth are practically chattering and you can’t seem to make yourself look either of them in the face. But when your glance wavers toward Ms. Condesce’s beautiful mass of thick, dark hair, you spy a sliver of cherry. You narrow your eyes impudently. _Aha_. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? You were the one who caught him in the act!”

Ms. Condesce throws her head back and laughs, further relieving your tension. But your gut is still churning with fear, and all the hair on the back of your neck stands on end.

“You’ve got guts, guppy! Yeah, I caught him eatin’ a good-lookin’ dish back there. That yours?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, just elbows the man in the ribs. “Apologize to my baker gill, lunkfish.”

He turns to glare at her instead, which somehow reduces the fear clouding your mind by at least half. “Fuck you, you’re the one who grabbed me. You apologize. And now she’s seen—“

Ms. Condesce elbows him again, hard enough that he winces. Golly, she’s fit, but that must have packed quite a punch. “You were eatin’ it, dumb-bass. An’ all she’s seen is two old fronds havin’ a bit of a dispute.” She smiles at you, reminiscent of a shark. “Ain’t that right, guppy?”

You nod uncertainly. You can’t quite shake a feeling of unease, something fishy brushing against your keen sleuthing instincts. A good detective never ignores her hunches.

“I don’t suppose I can help settle anything?” you offer, angling for more information like a true professional.

The man opens his mouth to say something, but Miss Condesce talks over him. “Nah, it’s just a game we’re playin’ with a couple other fronds. None ‘a’ your bassness.”

Oh, all right. That seems reasonable.

You remember to check your watch. Only two minutes left!

“I’m sorry, I really must get back to the counter.” You kneel down to pick up the broken pieces of spoon. Ow, you think you might have a bruise on your back from that wall. Well, it’ll heal. You always get over things quickly.

You hold your hand out politely to Ms. Condesce’s friend. “It was nice to meet you.”

He glances at your boss with an expression which broadcasts, _Are you fucking serious?_ as clearly as if he’d shouted it in his thick Irish brogue. She taps her foot impatiently. He shakes your hand. “You too, kid.” And, like it was being drawn out of him by an imp with barbed dentists’ pliers, “It was a good pie.”

“Yeah, make another tomorrow an’ I’ll put you on the kitchen payroll perchsonally,” says Ms. Condesce. She shoves you back up the alley. “Now git back ta work!”

She really is quite strong! You are almost too busy beaming to notice. “Thank you! Enjoy your game!”

You are not actually entirely mollified as you hurry back to the bakery, but you have other things to think about. Work first, of course, and then as soon as you get home, a second pie. Do you still have enough of all the requisite ingredients? You think so, but you don’t want to risk missing this chance to advance your culinary career. You will call your dad after work and ask him to check the pantry.

A second night baking will almost certainly put you behind in your own game with John, but you expect it will be well worth the temporary loss of pranking gambit. You have plenty of time to make it up before your birthday, and you know for a fact that there’s a store downtown that sells clown mannequins. Let him wake up to one of those looming over his bed, hoohoo!

What a successful investigation this has been!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deleted line from a turn the conversation didn't take: "You eye her friend a tad skeptically. He doesn’t really strike you as a cat person. Then again, there is a white cat who occasionally comes by your house, begs food, knocks things over, then vanishes again into thin air. So perhaps he’s a perfect cat person."


	5. John

Your name is John Egbert and you seem to have a knack for running into superheroes.

For instance, you’re pretty sure Vriska Serket once borrowed twenty dollars from you—well, took, but you did give them willingly. She was trying to catch a train north, and she didn’t have quite enough for the ticket. It was lucky she met someone as obliging as you!

And you’re certain that Terezi Pyrope once gave you false directions to the rocket at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City. You were visiting the city with your dad and sister—you don’t go on exotic international vacations like Rose, but you generally go on a family trip every summer—and you’d wandered away from them in the museum and gotten lost. It must have been obvious, because a girl in red glasses walked up to you, teased you a little bit, and offered directions to the rocket ship. In retrospect, maybe you shouldn’t have taken advice like “turn left at the green sign” from a blind girl, but she seemed very confident. And you’re pretty sure she misled you on purpose, though you don’t like to jump to mean conclusions like that.

And now you’re standing outside the Dadly Depot holding a bag full of various Dadly Depot supplies and talking to a very energetic, very irate Karkat Vantas. You didn’t really believe it was him when he first appeared—literally appeared out of nowhere in front of you, holding the hand of a dark-haired, spooky looking girl in red, who told him he’d be fine and then ran off. Rose talks about these guys all the time but you aren’t as up on their names—mostly just the ones whose photos you recognized, which Rose got really excited about. Superheroes aren’t really your thing; you’re more of a Nicholas Cage guy.

So your first thought when these kids appeared in front of you was that is was a new prank by your twin sister—a really good one, you’d have to concede. As is appropriate, given that it’s April 12th and thus nearly the climax of the two weeks between April Fools Day and your shared birthday. You two traditionally spend this fortnight playing your best pranks on each other. In theory, your dad is supposed to award a trophy to whoever pulls the _best_ best prank, but really he always just bakes you each a cake and tells you how proud he is of you both. Whatever. You’re pretty sure you always win anyway.

Right, being yelled at by a very short albino superhero.

“No, I am not a friend of your Jane!” he shouts. “I just need you to stand over there—“ he points at the corner of the sidewalk with a sickle in one hand, and then at a store on the opposite side of the crosswalk--“And when I like flying come over the side of that building with an imp, throw hammer at its head. Got it?”

He pulls his arm back to glare at you expectantly, nearly slicing your side with his sickle. It’s all very disconcerting, what with the red eyes and whole spontaneously-appearing, shouting sort-of-celebrity.

“Huh?” you manage.

Karkat scowls, and suddenly you’re hit with the memory—but not your memory? this is weird—of landing hard on your back, ow, with a huge imp straddling your chest and trying to bite your face off. It’s pinning one arm and that’s the arm that kept ahold of a sickle when you went flying—dammit, where’s Sollux? (who’s Sollux?) He was right next to you when this imp came out of nowhere. You broadcast your distress, and are rewarded when something promptly flies into your field of vision and smacks the imp in the head, hard enough to throw it half-off your chest. You do the rest, and look up to see a strange boy running—no, wait, that’s you—

You step back, blinking in confusion, clutching the Dadly Depot bag to your chest like a talisman. Boy, your father is taking a long time to run back into the store for “just one more thing.”

Karkat is still frowning intently at you; no more than a second has passed. “Sorry,” he says, a little less shouty. “Still have trouble with strength. Do you get it now? Imp, corner, hammer, throw?”

“Um, yes?” You think you do. Man, that was _weird_.

“Good.” He nods sharply and ushers you toward the corner. “This isn’t your job, but Aradia says it’s a time loop and we listen to her about that.” An image of the spooky, red-clad girl pops into your head, accompanied by a faint gust of irritation. Karkat grimaces, and looks for a moment like, well, a tired kid your age. “Overflow. Sorry.”

He leaves you at the corner. Before he’s out of sight down the block, you hear a commotion coming from across the street, or you guess the street beyond that block? The memory didn’t go that far. But there’s shouting. You think to rummage in your bag to find the hammer, so you’ll be ready, but before you do, someone—no, two someones, or maybe a someone and a something—come flying over the roof of the store across the street, and land in the middle of the street. You wince when they hit—you remember that, sort of. It hurt.

For a moment you’re still too shocked to move, but the imp—it’s definitely an imp, all misshapen limbs and bulging muscles and gnarled black fur—is clearly trying to bite the head of the boy it’s pinning down. And that’s definitely Karkat; his hat’s fallen off and you can see the pure white shock of hair. He’s fending the imp off with nothing but his bare arm.

A wave of distress rolls over you, and even though you remember sending it (sort of) you almost pause and freak out some more because of how real it feels. Well, it is real. You’re definitely distressed in your own right by now. But you’re also already running forward, pulling something hefty out of the bag—oh hey, the discounted three-pound hammer—and throwing it as hard as you can at the imp’s head.

A direct hit! That’s embarrassingly surprising. The imp jerks back and you reach into the bag again, hoping for something good. You get a small packet of pens, which is not so useful, but Karkat is already on his feet and slicing at the imp with his sickle. Once, twice, there goes an arm—wow, this is so cool. There’s bright red blood everywhere but it’s all the imp’s so that’s…good? Definitely good.

You see a gleam and bend down to pick up the second sickle, which Karkat dropped when he fell off the roof. His hands are on his knees now and he’s panting. A sense of relief, a sort of “crisis averted” thought, flies through your head and out towards everyone else you guess—the rest of the New Heroes.

Then he looks up and sees you—well, you guess he saw you before, but he doesn’t seem to have really registered it. And before that, but that wasn’t him yet? You don’t think you understand this time loop thing.

“What are you doing?” he demands, going from exhausted to shouting in about 0 seconds. “There’s an imp attack—even you can see that, yes? Run away, go, be safe!” He points emphatically back toward the Dadly Depot, where inexplicably nobody has noticed the noises from a couple blocks over.

“Hi, Karkat!” you say brightly, handing him his spare sickle. You figure it can’t hurt to be friendly at a stressful time like this, even if you’re still pretty confused yourself. “Actually, you said I had to throw the hammer, I guess because I saved your life so you could come back in time and tell me to?” Hey, you did save his life, didn’t you? He looked pretty stuck there—heck, he’d felt pretty stuck. You saved a superhero! Not bad.

“What,” he says, with narrowed eyes, and there isn’t even any inflection to the question.

Just then the spooky girl, Aradia, runs toward you from the opposite block, where the imp had come from.

Karkat!” she exclaims. “I saw the whole thing. Come on, we’d better set it up.”

She grabs his hand.

“I was over there, actually.” You say, and jog back toward the front of the Dadly Depot. Honestly, is he never going to be done in there? You already have a whole bag of stuff!

Though you might keep the hammer yourself, you think as you pause to pick it up. Unexpectedly awesome weapons, hammers.

“Thanks!” says Aradia, flashing you a bright smile. She’s actually pretty nice-looking. “C’mon, Karkat, it’s simple. Just tell him what to do, okay, then come back to the battle. Everyone’s fine, right?”

“Yeah,” he admits with a slightly distant expression on his face.

“Great!” says Aradia. She looks back at you. “Here, right?”

You return to your place by the DD door and squint at them. “A little to the left?”

“Thanks.” Karkat is still glaring, at the world in general you guess, but in a moment—from his point of view—at you again. You from two minutes ago. Current you blinks, and the superheroes disappear.

You pull out your phone. Rose will be so excited to hear about this!


	6. Roxy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, I'm trying to keep to canon-parallel interactions where I can. With the alpha kids, I make do with sprite associations...or just where the plot might go.

Your name is Roxy Lalonde and you hate Life.

No, not the abstract concept—though you could really do without some of it’s brightness, or noise, or just general…ugh. You hate hangovers. Why did you think it would be a good idea to go to the park, instead of staying inside where it’s dark and…okay not that quiet, what with all the kids running around. But at least they aren’t supposed to shout inside the House.

Which is why you took them to the park, of course. It’s not their fault Cadwell takes even more advantage of the well-stocked liquor cabinet than you do, and spends the rest of the day watching soaps. These kids deserve to run around outdoors, and they need something resembling supervision while they do it, so you left the littlest ones with Dirk (working on his computer, barely looking at you) and took anyone else who wanted to go to the park.

Plus it means you don’t have to talk to Dirk for another, oh, a couple hours probably. Good. God, he must be so disappointed in you.

You decide to blame Life. You’ve been doing that for a while—if she hadn’t killed your mom, you wouldn’t have grown up in the worst-run orphanage in the state, fallen in love with your best (only) friend at twelve, and become a lapsed alcoholic at sixteen.

 _Don’t be melodramatic,_ you chide your head-aching self. Janey is totes your best friend too, even if you’ve never actually met her face-to-face. Jake’s right up there too, and there are people at school or even other kids in the House who are pretty okay.

(You’d think people would have been excited about the chance to adopt the baby girl of a famous writer like your mom, but nope, no one cared. Same for Dirk, who’s cool, movie-making Bro got ganked by Life the same time as your mom. Completely unironic, you guess, a supervillain showing up at a con. Your mom and Dirk’s Bro got a bunch of fans out to safety, then the witch drained them dead. Or something. You aren’t really sure how it works.)

You take a swig of the clear liquid in your water bottle, which really is water because despite evidence to the contrary (you were waiting in his bed, in _lingerie_ ) you are cutting back, and oh god why can’t this be the sort of hangover where you don’t remember anything from the night before.

“Excuse me?”

You squint up at a brunette standing next to your bench. She’s about your age, but like half a foot taller. The sky behind her is waaay too bright.

“Yeah?”

“I was just wondering if you were all right,” the girl says seriously. “You, um, seem sorta down.”

She has a Canadian accent. It’s adorable.

There’s another girl standing behind the first one, short with tawny skin and hella long, dark hair tied up in a ponytail. Her sweater is shockingly pink. You approve.

“Nah, I’m fine,” you say. Is it that obvious that you’re feeling sorry for yourself? “Just chilling.” You take another sip of your water, totally casual.

“Uh-huh,” says the first girl, bright green eyes crinkled like she doesn’t really believe you.

Why is this even happening. Generally you are so good at hiding from people, especially the ones who want to help you. You have never lost a game of hide-and-seek in your life.

Then again, it’s not like you’re making the best effort here, what with sitting in broad daylight in the middle of a park. Yeah, you are the stealthiest. It’s you.

You might be still a little drunk, even through the hangover. And they—at least, this cute green-eyed girl—seem really sweet. You only have like two sentences to go on, but you definitely like her.

“I’ve got a friend, see,” you say, and once you’ve started the words pour out like a tipped wine glass. “And he’s, like, totally gay, has this huge crush on another guy and everything. But last night I got hellsa smashed, when I’ve been trying to not do that anymore, and I lay on his bed in my underwear until he came back from the library. Because I have an even huger crush on him, even though I know it’ll never work. So I just embarrassed us both to the extreme, but mostly me. And probably he hates me now, and I definitely sorta hate me, and—”

By the time you’re halfway through your confession, the girl is sitting next to you on the bench and holding her arms out like you’re going to cry onto the shoulder of a stranger in the middle of the city park. Which you totally do. She feels strong and warm, and you are the weirdest, weakest person in the world, aren’t you.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, like she comforts random crying girls in the park every day. Canadians really are the nicest. “I know how you feel. It’s okay. Shh.”

“Nep, we’re supposed to be looking for—“ the pink sweater girl says before your new friend kicks her in the ankle. At least, you think that’s what happens, based on how her leg moves. You’re too busy crying into her fuzzy olive jacket to actually look.

“I just thought I was over it, you know?” you blubber. “Like, years ago. I used to hit on him pretty hard, awkwardly, but I thought I was past that. And—and the drinking.” You really, really thought you were getting over the drinking. You thought you’d gotten so strong. But you haven’t, you haven’t at all.

(He’d frowned, so much that even non-expert Dirk-watchers would have noticed, walked you gently back to your own room and tucked you in like a little kid. Even behind his glasses, you knew he wasn’t meeting your eyes.)

Nep stroked you back like she’s petting a cat. “It’s okay, I know. I like someone the same way.” She pushes you back from her now-damp shoulder. You get the sense she could push a _lot_ harder, but she’s really gentle, and her smile is nothing but friendly. “You must have a heck of a hangover, too, huh? After the Leafs won the Cup two years ago, I drank like three bottles of hard cider and woke up next morning with the worst headache of my life.”

You have to laugh a little bit, because there’s no way this sweet Canadian girl knows anything about hangovers. So you miss the pleading glance she sends up at her companion, who sits on the other side of you with a gentle whoomph of skirts.

Pink Sweater sighs and puts a soft hand on your shoulder. “Why don’t you drink some more water?”

Nep nods encouragingly so you sniffle and comply. Miraculously, your head gets clearer, though everything’s still sort of bright and noisy. Then again, it’s sunny and there are kids shouting, so what did you expect.

“Thanks, you guys.” You put down your water bottle so you can wipe your nose on your sleeve, but Pink Sweater hands you a tissue. You honk into it. “It’s really super duper nice of you.” You turn so you can smile weakly at them both. “I’m Roxy, by the way. I generally tell people that before I start blubbering on them.”

The girls exchange a glance that you can’t quite parse.

“I’m—Elizabeth,” says Pink Sweater with a slight stutter. “This is…”

“Jean!” says Nep, though you guess that must be a nickname. You wonder how she got it out of “Jean.”

“We really do have to go, though,” Elizabeth says apologetically.

Nep-Jean frowns. “Yeah, we do. I’m sorry to, like, hug and run.”

“No worries!” You squeeze her hand. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Probably not,” she admits. “We’re, um, just visiting. For the day.”

“That’s fine,” you assure her, and stand up so that they can, too. “I think I’ll just, idk, give up on romance for a while. It never seems to work for me.”

Jean eyes widen. “Don’t do that! You’re sooo full of affection. You should share it, and get some yourself, and—“

“Ne— _Jean_ ,” says Elizabeth, tugging on her arm. “We’re supposed to be, you know, _thing_?” She turns to you and smiles sunnily. “You seem really nice and pretty and smart, though, Roxy. I’m sure you can get a boyfriend if you want. Maybe your friend is bi?”

“Ha, no, definitely not.” You grimace a little, but it’s hard not to return a smile with as many watts as Elizabeth’s. ( _Though I am!_ you think about adding, but no, ohmygod no, you are not going to hit on two random tourist girls in the park. Not even if you already cried like a kitten in front of them while they gave your backrubs and tissues. You have stopping points _somewhere_ , really low down.)

(Damn it, you have to talk to Dirk, don’t you.)

Suddenly you’re being hugged, twice over, and of course you hug back because screw it, anyone who gets you out of a funk is totally your friend now, even if you’re never going to see them again. Jean and Elizabeth are _super_ sweet.

“By the way,” Jean says as they pull back, “your sweater is _paw_ sitively adorable.”

“Adora _bubble_ ,” Elizabeth corrects, and they giggle together.

You don’t need to glance down; it’s one of your favorites: purple with a pink kitty face on the chest. It is _totally_ pawsitively adorabubble. “You like cats?”

“Love them!” says Jean. “But we really do have to go. So…bye!”

You repeat, “Bye!” and Elizabeth echoes you, and the girls take off jogging down the path. Elizabeth could be any other jogger, but Jean runs like she’s hunting something, twitching her head as if to catch a scent. Well, you guess perfectly normal girls don’t comfort random strangers on park benches.

You wander around the perimeter of the playground until you’re sure all your kids are still alive, unwounded, and having fun, then sit back down on your bench. It’s actually pretty nice out, now that the sun isn’t blindingly bright. It’ll be good to let the little ones run around a bit longer. You might be putting off talking to Dirk, but there are legitimate reasons, too, even now that you feel less completely awful.

Ugh, you promised to help him with his AI project this afternoon, didn’t you. For the present for Jake. This is going to be _infinity_ awkward.

You get out your phone and pull up your favorite fanfiction website to pass the a bit more time. You know what would really make you feel less awful: wizard fic.


	7. Jade

Your name is Jade Harley and you are inside a volcano!

It’s not like there’s lava or anything. Well, there is, but it’s all to one side behind a super thick, chemically treated glass wall that you check for fractures every time you come down here. So it’s just mood lighting, perfect for a mad scientist’s abandoned laboratory.

It must’ve been really neat when the lab was running, too! Most of the machinery was gone before your grandparents even moved to this island, and they took out nearly all of what was left. You can’t blame them—it was probably sort of spooky even when there were still electric lights everywhere, and it’s almost _impossible_ to keep the rain out. The big, sunny lab at the house is MUCH nicer.

They left the transportalizer platforms, though, which is how you came down here today. The yellow one’s twin is in your bright, clean lab. It’s a good thing, too, because the alternative is rappelling down all 53.8m of the inner volcano wall and climbing all the way back up when you’re through. You’ve tried to get Bec to help, but he hates the place so much he won’t even send you in alone.

The purple transportalizer has never worked, that you know of. But you’ll find out where it goes someday! The Book promised!

You’re down here to check the Book today. That’s usually why you come down here. You wish you could just take it out with you, to somewhere with better lighting and less creeping steam. But every time you’ve tried, something has gotten in the way—you tripped and got a nasty cut, the transportalizer wouldn’t work, a telekinetic ram attacked out of nowhere…even though most of the animals don’t like this place any more than Bec does!

Similar shenanigans have prevented you from telling anyone else about the Book, not even Jake. As far as he and your friends know, you have prophetic dreams.

(You still can’t really believe they all bought that load of squash! Jake, sure; your little brother is more gullible than a sheep at the slaughterhouse. But Rose? Rose is supposed to know everything!)

But not yet, you guess. According to the Book.

It’s not actually very impressive, considering it’s full of information about what’s going to happen to you and your friends (and your brother and _his_ friends) in the future. It sits on a pedestal in the middle of the volcano cavern, a couple minutes walk from the transportalizers by the wall. The cover is plain black with a weird sort of cartoon face in the middle. The pages are yellowing but still in pretty good condition, and only smell a little of mildew. The handwriting is loopy but legible, all in dark red ink that you _know_ isn’t blood because you once took a sample back to the lab for tests.

You have your suspicions about the identity of the author, what with the future-telling, perfectly timed coincidences keeping it secret, and how much you and everyone you know seem destined to help save the world from super-evil. You aren’t quite sure you can trust her (if she even exists, which no one has ever actually proved) but the Book hasn’t steered you wrong yet. You would’ve lost half the pumpkins in the western garden last year if it hadn’t warned you about the surprise storm. And it’s been a big help with your inventions!

That’s why you’re here today, actually: to recheck the description of future-you fighting with the shrink and enlarge rays you’ve been developing. You’ve been trying to fix them into something you can strap to your palms, like the Book says, but you aren’t sure you have the specifications right. And you just can’t get the battery to last!

It’s times like this that you really miss your grandparents, especially Grandma. She was a pioneer in computers and engineering. Then she disappeared for three days and washed back to shore with trident holes in her chest. Grandpa was never the same, but he kept tinkering with the robots right up until the Accident. You have a lot to live up to in terms of both inventing and fighting evil.

You feel rather than hear, much less see, the purple transportalizer turn on. You’ve always had a very strong sense of the space around you, and the transportalizers are 0.65km away from where you left the Book, but there is nothing between you and them to get in the way of your spatial awareness.

You sprint back, of course. Forget about the Book, there’s a mysterious box waiting for you! You weren’t expecting this!

You pull it quickly off the purple platform, just in case it goes off again and takes the present away. Then you plop down on the floor and pull everything out.

First comes a large hammer—like, really big, with a head nearly as big as yours. You recognize the bright paint from a description in the book: this is for John! Heck yeah, you didn’t realize you weren’t going to have to make all your team’s supertech by yourself. This is so great!

There’s a button in the side and you think you know what it’s going to do so you grip the handle tight with both hands before pressi—yep, that’s a rocket booster! Except it wasn’t rocket flame coming out the underside of the hammer head so much as super compressed air. Hm, you wonder how that works. Maybe you can reverse engineer it…

Next you pull out a slim white wand, sharpened to a deadly point, which looks more like an enlarged knitting needle than anything. That’ll be for Rose. You’d thought there’d be two…? Oh well, you bet you can copy it. There’s a button on this one, too, much more subtle than on John’s hammer. You press it gently, and a beam of something beyond black shoots out of the hook near the pointy end. Holy cow, was that _dark energy_?! You’re pretty sure that was dark energy! You cannot WAIT to get this back to the lab!!

…If you can, that is. You can never take the Book. But you’re meant to _use_ these weapons, or at least reverse engineer them to use your own versions. Oh man, shit must be going to get real really soon! You hadn’t realized time was passing so fast.

You pick up Dave’s sword next. It feels weird, almost jittery in your hand. For a moment, you think you’re holding two swords. For another moment, you feel like you aren’t holding any. Then your whole arm feels missing—no, there it is, sweeping the sword through the air right alongside the second (or third?) version of…yourself?

The sword falls back into the box half a second before you actually drop it. Ugh. The spirit of scientific experimentation may often drive you, but you think you’ll just let Dave figure the sword out himself. He likes that sort of timey-wimey stuff.

You saved the best for last on purpose: a great blue rifle, bigger than any you’ve seen but Grandpa’s blunderbuss, with a harpoon on the end like a bolt of purple lightning. You stand and raise it to your shoulder with a grin. Now _this_ is a _gun!_ You know you’re going to be fighting mostly with your shrinking and enlarging devices, which you invented all on your own and really are quite proud of, but you can’t deny the excitement of a real-life _giant laser gun!_

You decide to aim it at the hole in the ceiling, so you don’t damage anything. This doesn’t go quite as planned—wow, that is a LOT of kickback!

Rocks start falling and you throw everything back in the box as quick as possible. You’re about to step on the yellow transportalizer when you remember the Book. You look back. You can sprint the distance and back in under five minutes, but it’s a dumb risk to take right now. The ceiling is really starting to collapse. Geez, it wasn’t _that_ big a laser blast!

The transportalizer whisks you away with a gentle buzz.

You jump off the platform, drop the box on your lab floor, and run over to the window. You can’t hear the crashing from here, but you can see when the tip of the cone collapses into jagged spikes and an opening at least twice as big as it used to be. It’s still nothing on the base, but you can only imagine how much rock the old evil laboratory is now under. You wouldn’t be surprised if the glass broke as well, though the magma is still hidden inside the mountain…for _now_!

You’re a little surprised Jake isn’t running in to see if you’ve seen it, too—wait, no you aren’t. Last time you saw him, he was in his room watching _Avatar_ for the seventy billionth time. He probably hasn’t even notice the volcano collapsing.

Glancing back, you see the lights on the base of the transportalizer have gone out. If you ever want to “have prophetic dreams” again, you’ll have to dig through several tons of rock and possibly lava. _If_ the Book is even still intact.

If it’s not…you’ll cope. It’s not like there’s much longer before John’s birthday, when everything starts! The Book warned you about that years ago, and you’ve done your best to explain to your friends and Jake, who you can only hope passed the message along to his friends. They’re going to be really important too, after all. Dirk has something big even before John’s birthday.

You return to the box and bring it over to your workbench, where all your other superhero gadgets-in-progress are stored. You push away the blueprint for the experimental invisibility cloak you’d been planning for Jake’s friend Roxy—the Book says she’ll be able to disappear and Jake has mentioned more than once how much she likes wizards, so you figured what the heck—and bring the half-finished bunnybot front and center. You need someone trustworthy to distribute the crime-fighting tools everyone is going to need when the action starts. John especially is going to need all the help he can get!

You pick up a screwdriver and get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea is that they're on Calmasis's original island laboratory, where they did experiments on all sorts of animals before putting those powers in humans. I do not remotely remember how canonically plausible this is for the SotW AU proper.


	8. Dirk

“Your AI was very well-written.”

Your name is Dirk Strider and damn _right_ the Auto-Researcher is good. You spent two years on that bastard before you let him loose. He _better_ be good.

Though not, apparently, good enough to avoid detection by the superhuman who just fell into step beside you on your way home from school. In the next moment, the Psionic puts a hand on your arm and the sidewalk vanishes in a red-blue flash of static, replaced by a hotel room with a dirty carpet and closed shades.

There’s another man sitting on the bed, with dark skin and somewhat scruffy hair, and you’ve watched enough press—all of it, basically, in the course of this project—to recognize the elder Vantas. Some of the nerves leech out of you. He looks safe, trustworthy, and—fuck fuck _fuck_ these are _not your feelings_.

Vantas winces a bit as you begin freaking out, but then there’s a flash of calculation in his eyes and you’re hit with a much stronger surge of reassurance. Your rising panic fades back to nothing. You’re relaxed, unafraid, and you can’t even freak out about the fact that you can’t freak out about…yeah. You saw this coming and you did _not_ anticipate how uncomfortable it is to have an empath in your head. Except it’s not uncomfortable, everything’s fine. Except it’s like an itch. Except—

No. Chill. Take a deep breath. Dispassion is your whole shtick. You are not going to splinter into a billion neurotic pieces; you are going to ride this wave of comfortableness like your Bro rocketboarding off the roof in that one YouTube video. There’s a hope spot: at least these people are much less likely to kill you than Life and her cronies, if you had sussed out _their_ secret identities. You’re like 98% certain of this.

Vantas gives you an encouraging smile and you feel another wash of ease. Ugh.

“Sit down.”

There’s a harder edge than before in the Psionic’s voice as he pushes you towards the room’s lone, rickety wooden chair. Your backpack goes on the floor at your feet.

When you teleported in, you were facing away from the door; sitting down, you can see a short-haired woman leaning against it, holding a cane and grinning like a shark. It’s the sort of grin that should be patented and hung on a wall somewhere fat old rich dudes can sip brandy and say, “Yes, that’s a classic ’09 Redglare, sharp and toothy with a curl of the lip that suggests she’s about to slice open someone’s throat—a teenager, perhaps, who used an ingenious home-coded AI to hack out one too many of her group’s secrets. I purchased it at a charity auction, you know, to support the yacht club.”

This might throw a crimp in your plans.

“You know who we are,” says Vantas. It’s not a question. Of course it’s not: he can read your fucking mind. You nod.

He leans forward, eyes dark and intent. “Dirk, what you need to understand is how important it is that nobody knows where the Gamma team comes from. Otherwise, people they know might be targeted, innocent civilians in a cruel game that only a…few enjoy.” His eyes gentle. “I think you know that already.”

Fuck him for seeing the flash of memory of your Bro. At least he’s not bullshitting around, that’s…satisfying.

You cross your arms and lean back, the picture of a bored, belligerent teen. “I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t going to make the information public.” You glance at the Psionic. “I don’t even know how much I got.”

He remains tight-lipped. Damn, you really do want to know. Dumbass AI, taking so long to thoroughly search the internet that you had to leave it running while you went to school. (You’d also vaguely hoped that if you weren’t physically at your computer, you’d be less likely to get caught. Obviously that didn’t pan out.)

Redglare twirls her the top of her cane idly around her hand. It’s a dragon head. “He’s telling the truth, at least about not sharing the information. Mostly.” Her dark lips curl up. “He certainly _believes_ he’s not an idiot.”

You shoot her a petulant glare. Usually you’d let something like that go with maybe a flicker of your eyes but hey, apparently they want your guard let down for this little chat. So it’s down.

The Psionic snorts. “Of course. Spending twenty-eight months learning how to code and building an AI from scratch to discover the secret identities of world-renowned superheroes, all to impress a boy on whom you have a ‘crush’…that is a _certain_ sign of practical intelligence.”

That doesn’t actually sound as stupid as you’d thought it might. Sweet. “I knew how to code before I started on the Auto-Researcher.”

“Hardly. Who taught him how to hack? Those protocols are much more sophisticated than the rest.”

There’s a truth-smeller and an empath in the room and still you spit out, “Nobody. Me. I wrote all of it. Based the thought patterns on my own brain.” You practice a kata in there now—right, kick, slide, up. You aren’t worried, you aren’t scared (you really aren’t), it’s just a mental exercise. Pink elephants. Roxy likes pink animals. Fuck. Turn, low kick, do _not_ think about—

“Roxy Lalonde,” Vantas tells the others. “Yes, the daughter of the author Meenah killed. Shoulder-length blond hair with a pink tint, pale skin, about 5’4”. They grew up in the orphanage together. She’ll be staying late at school, probably in the library. Maybe computer labs. You’d better get her, too, if there’s no crowd?”

“Library,” the Psionic says a little distantly. “No one in line of sight. I’ve got the cameras—“

“Leave her alone,” you snarl. You don’t even remember standing, much less grabbing his arm. There’s still a haze of contentment and unconcern crowding your mind but fuck that, this is on you, not Roxy. “She’s been having a hard time, okay? She’s trying to go cold turkey on the booze and it’s not easy, so let her have her afternoon reading wizard books. She didn’t even think it was a good idea. Figured the same thing you did about it being dangerous for the families.”

The Psionic is looking at Vantas, who is pursing his lips at you. Most of your fervor drains away. You cling to the iron core of it like a lifeboat off the Titanic, or maybe a toddler with a favorite plush puppet. This is _your_ righteous guilty anger. He can’t have it. You will throw a psychic temper tantrum, pounding your mental fists on the cerebellum floor and wailing with all the sound in your auditory cortex.

You cross your arms again, still standing. Try to regain your cool in a way that still feels like you. “I’ll tell her whatever you want, that I couldn’t find anything or the program crashed or whatever. The truth, that I got busted and presumably immanently threatened to never do it again or I’ll be disappeared off the face of the earth. Just leave Roxy out of it. And Jake—it’s a surprise, he doesn’t know shit.”

You spread your defiant stare around the room. You are mostly certain these guys don’t really want to hurt you or your friends, and almost as certain that that certainty is from your own analysis rather than any induced bias. But you can’t be sure about either conclusion.

Vantas and the Psionic both look a little diffident, but Redglare stalks forward with her shark-grin in full force, cane swung back over one shoulder.

“You know,” she says, “this sounds like what we in the legal business like to refer to as a ‘means of coercion.’”

“I wasn’t aware that you actually had a law degree,” you shoot back. “Is it from Bite Me College, or the University of What Do You Want?”

“Ha. So Roxy helped you code your little computer sneak?”

“Yes.” There’s no point in lying now, particularly not to her.

“Why?”

“Because she’s supportive of her friends to an extent that would be baffling to any outside observer.“

“And?”

Like fuck are you going to explain your whole group’s tangle of unrequited romance if you don’t absolutely have to. “She wouldn’t mind getting a crack at helping take down Life; there was some of that even if she wouldn’t admit it. But like I said, she didn’t really think this would lead to anything good.”

Redglare sniffs, and glances at Vantas, who nods imperceptibly back. Oh good, so they probably got at least an impression of the whole tangled mess. Great. You still aren’t going to _talk_ about it.

Redglare focuses back on you. Her dragon-headed cane, hanging over her shoulder, looks like it’s staring too. It unnerves you more than it should. “Did she tell anybody about the Auto-Researcher?”

“No. Roxy’s good at keeping secrets.” Even when she’s drunk.

“Hearsay. Did you talk to anyone else about it?”

“Just Roxy.” Honesty was definitely the best policy here. “I told Jake a couple days ago that I had something really good for his birthday that I couldn’t send over the computer, but he doesn’t know what.” He’d assured you he would find a way for that to work, or more likely his sister would, but hadn’t actually said how yet. But now was not the time to think about that.

“Did you intend to share the results with anyone but those two?”

“No.”

“Did you come up with this idea yourself?”

“Completely.”

Her eyes narrow dangerously. “Is that so.”

“I mean, I’m not the first to create a facial recognition program to track down real life people so I probably got the idea from NCIS or some shit like that. But yes.” Shit, she really knows when you aren’t giving the whole truth. That’s tough to deal with.

But she seems satisfied with your answers. “Did anyone other than Ms. Lalonde give you help on the project?”

“Not actively. I googled a lot of crap in the process, so obviously someone must have written all that. Unless I get up to serious time travel shenanigans in the future.”

She smirks with a little genuine amusement. “All right, he seems clean. Mituna, you got techie questions?”

The Psionic shakes his head. “I know ev—”

He stops suddenly, mismatched eyes widening in horror. Vantas’s follow suit a moment later with a hiss of fear. All your panic and discomfort comes rushing back in as he loses his grip on your head, and Redglare looks between them with a startled, “What?”

You guess Vantas shoves the knowledge—what the fuck is going _on_?—into her mind because an instant later she snarls, tensing into what you recognize as a ready position. “I’ll kill him. I’ll _kill_ him this time.”

“What’s wrong?” you demand, on your feet again. Fear bubbles in your chest. “Is it Roxy? Is she—“

“Your friend is fine,” says Vantas. “I’m sorry, Dirk, but we have to go.” He’s so polite, even when you can tell he’s losing control. Fear and a fierce, defensive anger that aren’t yours roll through you, and for a moment you can see (from above, like a security camera) a tall redheaded man stalking through…somewhere. You don’t recognize it but you can feel that it’s home, and the grossest invasion that he should be there.

“What’s going—”

But the Psionic is already grabbing your shoulder and everything disappears in a flash of blue-red-white, and then you’re in a familiar alley around the corner from the shitty orphanage you’ve every now and then slipped up and called “home” yourself.

Half a second later, you’re upside-down in the air over the hard cement, sparks racing over your body like the worst case of pins and needles you’ve ever had. Your head is about level with the Psionic’s, about six feet up and distinctly higher than you’re comfortable having your head when your body isn’t under it.

“Don’t do it again,” he snarls, and disappears with a crackle of static. You have another half second to turn yourself around before you hit the ground. You suddenly do not _remotely_ regret all the hours you’ve spent training your reflexes. It still hurts. Fuck cement. Why aren’t sidewalks paved in trampolines.

There’s another, softer buzz of static and your backpacks thumps down a couple inches from your head. Well that’s obliging of him, you guess.

You wait a moment to see if anything else lands, then struggle to your feet. Dust yourself off, grab your backpack…you’re actually going to be back a little earlier than usual, despite the side trip. Teleportation is exactly as sweet as you always dreamed.

You don’t stop not-quite-holding your breath until you’re back in the House though, and your backpack lands heavily on your bed as you stride across the hall to find Jimmy Dole sitting on his bed, playing on a DS. You snag it out of his hands and turn it off. It’s got limited Internet access.

“Hey!”

“I saved the game,” you say, holding the DS out of his reach. You did—you’re not a _total_ asshole. “Did you get my paper?”

He slouches back against his pillow, trying to look tough rather than sulky. He’s nine years old and missing half his front teeth, so it doesn’t work. “Yeah. One copy, right after it came out.” He pats the blanket by his hand. It crackles. “You owe me ten bucks, and another twenty for faking sick.”

“I owe you five bucks,” you correct him, “and another five for faking sick.” But you peel an extra couple bucks out of your pocket, because you’re feeling pretty guilty for involving anyone else in this. And you give the DS back.

“It’s just a bunch of stupid numbers,” Jimmy grumbles. But he takes your payout and passes you the goods.

You wait until you’re back in your bedroom to read them, door closed and all electronics off. It is just a string of numbers—coordinates. Not all twelve, but nine, and you never thought you were going to get Vantas or Serket anyway. You believe tentacleTherapist’s theory about Vantas. You wonder who else you’re missing.

You don’t consider the option that any of the coordinates are _wrong_. AR was too good. You’ve got Karkat’s team in your hands, more or less. You’ll have to be much cannier about your research now, proxies galore and nothing from your own computer, but this is more than just a thing to impress Jake—your ploy with the House printer _worked_ (you can’t quite believe it worked. You never thought you’d be _happy_ for that crapshoot printer that always prints two of everything and never records it.) You’ve got a _taste_ for outwitting superhumans.

Next up: the bad guys.


	9. Epilogue

A couple weeks later, another spam message landed in the inboxes of hundreds of Tumblr users, including one psychopompiatrist. Most recipients deleted it at a glance, but those who looked closer read,

_Hi, I’m Tim! I’m testing out a NEW GAME on my Tumblr. Reviewers say it only has 9 Stars out of 12, but with YOUR help, I KNOW we can make it ALL THE WAY! Get back to me here at 7r1x73r7w1n5, and keep an eye out for more!_

.

Nine days after that, a package arrived on John’s doorstep labeled, “Early birthday present. Open IMMEDIATELY.” Inside were four radios shaped like walkie-talkies and one note:

_John,_

_Please distribute these among yourself, your twin, and her online friends, as rapidly as possible. She’ll have their addresses. Don’t worry about Jade and her brother; they should already have their own. Dave does as well. Tune it to the 413 th frequency to talk, and be ready. I think Jade’s dreams might be correct, scientifically implausible as they are: Something is going to happen soon. We will want a secure means of communication. _

_Yours in Camaraderie,_

_Rose Lalonde_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think these eight do something simultaneous to the climax of the main SotW plot that's completely essential to saving the world but somewhere totally different from where the main confrontation and any relevant characters are, and none of them interact or even properly know about each other's actions until afterwards. Like how in the Heroes of Olympus series, it's revealed that the Roman demigods were totally also saving the world during The Last Olympian, and if they hadn't done their thing, the Greeks would've been fucked?
> 
> Also, it's subtle, but I tried to imply that the human kids have naturally occurring lowkey superpowers:  
> Rose - mild prescience/uncannily accurate hunches  
> Jake - subconscious probability manipulator (aka Plot Coupon)  
> Dave - instinctive temporal, can use that timey-wimey sword  
> Jane - more-than-human healing factor (though not Peixes-class at all)  
> John - boosts powers of those near him  
> Roxy - capable of going unnoticed when she wants to  
> Jade - instinctive spatial awareness; genius inventor  
> Dirk - either resistant to psychic influence or just INCREDIBLY stubborn; jury's out


End file.
